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March Issue 2003
Aids Memorial Quilt Display at Columbia College in Columbia, SC
Columbia College in Columbia, SC, will display four panels of the Aids Memorial Quilt in Goodall Gallery, Spears Music/Art Center, March 23-25, 2003. The Quilt was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 and is the largest community art project in the world. The Quilt has been the subject of countless books, films, scholarly papers, articles, and theatrical, artistic and musical performances; Common Threads: Stories From The Quilt won the Academy Award.
An opening ceremony will be held on Sunday, March 23, at 7pm with performances by Danielle Howle and the Columbia College Dance Company in the Concert Hall of Spears Music/Art Center. Admission is free and open to the public.
The event is cosponsored by the Columbia College Office of Student Activities, Diversity Committee, Fine Arts Committee, and Women's Studies Committee.
History of the Quilt
In June of 1987, a small group of strangers gathered in a San Francisco storefront to document the lives they feared history would neglect. Their goal was to create a memorial for those who had died of AIDS, and to thereby help people understand the devastating impact of the diseases This meeting of devoted friends and lovers served as the foundation of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt.
Today the Quilt is a powerful visual reminder of the AIDS pandemic. More than 44,000 individual 3-by-6-foot memorial panels -- each one commemorating the life of someone who has died of AIDS - have been sewn together by friends, lovers and family members. The Quilt was conceived in November of 1985 by longtime San Francisco gay rights activist Cleve Jones. Since the 1978 assassinations of gay San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone, Jones had helped organize the annual candlelight march honoring these men.
While planning the 1985 march, he learned that over 1,000 San Franciscans had been lost to AIDS. He asked each of his fellow marchers to write on placards the names of friends and loved ones who had died of AIDS. At the end of the march, Jones and others stood on ladders taping these placards to the walls of the San Francisco Federal Building. The wall of names looked like a patchwork quilt.
Inspired by this sight, Jones and friends made plans for a larger memorial. A little over a year later, he created the first panel for the AIDS Memorial Quilt in memory of his friend Marvin Feldman. In June of 1987, Jones teamed up with Mike Smith and several others to formally organize the NAMES Project Foundation.
Public response to the Quilt was immediate. People in the U.S. cities most affected by AIDS -- New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco -- sent panels to the San Francisco workshop. Generous donors rapidly supplied sewing machines, equipment and volunteers.
The Inaugural Display
On October 11, 1987, the Quilt was displayed for the first time on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., during the National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. It covered a space larger than a football field and included 1,920 panels. Half a million people visited the Quilt that weekend.
The overwhelming response to the Quilt's inaugural display led to a four-month, 20-city, national tour for the Quilt in the spring of 1988. The tour raised nearly $500,000 for hundreds of AIDS service organizations. More than 9,000 volunteers across the country helped the seven-person traveling crew move and display the Quilt. Local panels were added in each city, tripling the Quilt's size to more than 6,000 panels by the end of the tour.
The Quilt Grows
The Quilt returned to Washington, D.C., in October of 1988, when 8,288 panels were displayed on the Ellipse in front of the White House. Celebrities, politicians, families, lovers and friends read aloud the names of the people represented by the Quilt panels. The reading of names is now a tradition followed at nearly every Quilt display.
In 1989 a second tour of North America brought the Quilt to 19 additional cities in the United States and Canada. That tour and other 1989 displays raised nearly a quarter of a million dollars for AIDS service organizations. In October of that year, the Quilt was again displayed on the Ellipse in Washington, D.C.
By 1992, the AIDS Memorial Quilt included panels from every state and 28 countries. In October 1992, the entire Quilt returned to Washington, D.C. And in January 1993, the NAMES Project was invited to march in President Clinton's inaugural parade.
The last display of the entire AIDS Memorial Quilt was in October of 1996. The Quilt covered the entire National Mall in Washington, D.C.
The Quilt Today
Today there are around 35 NAMES Project chapters
in the United States and 46 independent Quilt affiliates around
the world. Since 1987, over 14 million people have visited the
Quilt at thousands of
displays worldwide. Through such displays, the NAMES Project Foundation
has raised over $3 million for AIDS service organizations throughout
North America.
The Washington, D.C., displays of October 1987, 1988, 1989, 1992 and 1996 are the only ones to have featured the Quilt in its entirety.
The Quilt has redefined the tradition of quilt-making in response to contemporary circumstances. A memorial, a tool for education and a work of art, the Quilt is a unique creation, an uncommon and uplifting response to the tragic loss of human life.
For more information check our SC Institutional
Gallery listings, call the gallery at 803/786-3033 or on the web
at (www.columbiacollegesc.edu).
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